Monitoring and treatment of premature infants or critically ill newborns is complicated and expensive. The efficacy of the monitoring system, among other things, depends on which parameters are being monitored, and how many of the measurements can be made automatic without human intervention, without sacrificing system reliability.
Several approaches to measurement of illness severity have been known to be used hitherto, and those have varying degrees of cost and reliability. Most known approaches have been devised, however, without specific emphasis on the patient to be monitored being a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patient.